Many eco-friendly clothing and shoe companies have prices well beyond many people’s spending limit, so we are very excited to see that Payless ShoeSource has come out with an eco-friendly brand named zoe&zac. zoe&zac products are made from sustainable materials such as organic cotton and linen, recycled rubber, water-based glues, plastic bottles, and natural hemp. To go beyond just the product, zoe&zac shoes are sold in 100% recycled shoeboxes with soy ink printing. All shoes in this brand are sold for under $30.  We love the styles. You can purchase zoe&zac women or girls shoes at any Payless ShoeSource store or on-line. If you have AAA, you can even get 10% off your regular purchases at Payless ShoeSource!

In addition, for each zoe&zac product or reusable bag sold, Payless ShoeSource will donate $1 to the Nature Conservancy’s Plant A Billion Trees program. Big green thumb up for Payless ShoeSource and their affordable eco-friendly initiatives!

Almost every major store now sells reusable bags in an effort to cut down on paper and plastic. This weekend we found another approach to help satisfy these needs. ALDO Group has changed its outlook when it comes to packaging to embrace the classic theory to ”reduce, reuse, and recycle.”

What has ALDO done to change its packaging so drastically? ALDO no longer gives its customers bags, and instead a handle has been added to their shoeboxes. Their shoeboxes are now only made out of recycled material and printed with soy ink. They are even encouraging their customers to reuse their shoeboxes to store collectables such as CD cases and photos by providing a label index with the box. And if you so desperately need a bag, because you are buying so many pairs of shoes, accessories, or handbags, ALDO’s bags are now 100% tree free to encourage responsible forest management across our globe. How about those changes for a creative start?

Check out their Take the Box, Not the Bag campaign. We give ALDO a big green thumb up for making these changes and hope more retail stores will take on these same goals of completing the circle.

Our favorite online shoe and handbag store (Endless.com) is having an Earth Day sale on all of their Eco-Chic Shoes & Handbags (over 2,000 products)! You can get $15 off an order of $80. They have free 2nd day shipping and free 365 day returns. This is a great chance to get your eco-shoes and reusable bags so you can celebrate Earth Day in style!

Here are a couple of fun facts about some of the Endless.com brands:

1.  TOMS donates a pair of shoes to a child for every pair that they sell.
2. Matt & Nat uses plastic bottles to make their vegan handbags.
3. Nahui Ollin makes handbags out of candy wrappers.
4. Cri de Coeur plants a tree for every pair of shoes sold and offsets their carbons emissions through carbonfund.org.

These brands and numerous more are providing earth-friendly products and using socially responsible practices. Check them out at Endless.com!

You do not have to sacrifice fashion for nature. Shop eco-chic!

To be labeled a vegetarian shoe or handbag, the product must be ethical, and animal, leather, and cruelty free. Purchasing vegetarian products helps promote a greener living, because the processes used to create leather and animal fur products are bad for our environment and the use of animals to make apparel and accessories can lead to extinction.

Where can you get vegetarian shoes and handbags? We found a great site for vegetarian shoes and handbags online at Endless.com(page will show search for all vegetarian products). Endless.com does not sell just vegetarian shoes, but what makes this site so great is that they have free overnight shipping on many of their products, they have free return shipping, and they have a 100% price guarantee. At this site you can choose numerous brands and they have a collection of very stylish shoes. To refine your search to just Women’s Shoes, Men’s Shoes, or Handbags, click on that department, and click on Vegetarian under Category. Go online shopping and purchase vegetarian products. That is what we like to call green shopping.

Vegetarian is no longer a description of how one eats. It is a description of how one accessorizes!

Most of the time when we find eco-friendly clothing, we have to compromise on the design. We have found a company that believes “that that one should not trade ethics for fashion, nor sacrifice style for conscience.” Bourgeois Boheme offers a variety of stylish green shoes from the UK. Although not as cheap as regular shoes (although that all depends on where you typically shop), they’re still affordable. They offer a wide range of shoes and accessories for men and women from all sorts of different materials, including hemp. Each item is given a set of badges such as Organic, Fair-Trade, and Vegan to explain how that item was manufactured. You can wear green and be stylish.

Walk green! Buy green shoes.